HJBR Nov/Dec 2021

STORM SURGE 14 NOV / DEC 2021 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE   and the need to support the supply chain for home oxygen; sheltering for the elderly and electrically dependent during a prolonged power outage; supporting other medically fragile patients in the community. Torcson Hurricane Ida is causing further delays in patients receiving essential care for preventative services, chronic disease management and time-sensitive surgical procedures that had already been put off because of COVID-19. Lorio The primary ongoing public health challenges are chronic condition manage- ment for obesity, heart failure, diabetes management, COPD, etc. Treatment and therapy options were greatly limited dur- ing the storm. For example, without electric- ity, patients requiring CPAP/BiPAP/ventila- tor support could not utilize these services or had to be transported out of the area. Food ability and scarcity in the community added to challenges for diabetes manage- ment and chronic heart failure compliance. Many patients came into clinics and emer- gency departments with volume overload due to increased salt consumption (CHF) or uncontrolled diabetes. Do you envision changes to the healthcare infrastructure as a result of this storm? Hart Digital healthcare will likely continue to expand and is important to ensuring that people can continue healthcare wherever they are. Elder The healthcare systemwill adapt to the threat of prolonged power outages and the effects of this on the community, not just in the hospitals — all of which have been hard- ened post Hurricane Katrina to continue operations during and post hurricane. Torcson I believe one of the most valu- able improvements we could see would be more emphasis on coordinating healthcare resources across regions. Lorio Based on lessons learned in this storm, we are adjusting and improving our pre- stormprocess for our healthcare infrastruc- ture. We have also developed processes to deploy outreach and clinical services post stormusing a MobileWalk-inMedical Clinic deployed to areas in the community where the storm hit the hardest. We also identified the need to increase support and ancillary services to remain in-house, in addition to clinical staff, nutrition and housekeeping. What about emergency planning and response at the state and local levels? What was helpful; what could be improved? Hart We had a strong partnership, and getting healthcare organizations back up and running was a priority for all leaders. Recent weather issues (Hurricane Laura, ice storms) showed a community need for oxygen, so we worked with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) to identify oxy- gen stations for patients across the state. Extended communications outages made communicating directly with patients chal- lenging — low tech and more proactive com- munications to inform patients about how they could take care of their health needs will be important moving forward. But one thing that was pretty neat was that we were able to put a small blimp from one of the communications companies up in the air, and it was able to establish temporary phone and internet connectivity in Houma. That was something to my knowledge that we had not needed to resort to in the past. Torcson An opportunity exists for bet- ter coordination of available resources amongst the disparate healthcare systems. Lorio Organizations such as the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emer- gency Preparedness and Terrebonne Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness were beneficial and very much responsive to our needs immediately after the storm, from evacuation to helping to provide resources so that we could stand up services as soon as possible. They assisted in deploying a field hospi- tal to aid our emergency walk-in clinic, provided additional ambulance services stationed onsite, and worked to improve “Electrically dependent patients in their homes without power and those requiring hemodialysis have a limited amount of time before their situation could become dire. There is a need to quickly reopen dialysis centers and supply home oxygen to those in need.” –JEFFREY M. ELDER, MD, FAAEM, FACEP, FAEMS